


this love of mine (watch it be the ruination of us both)

by postfixrevolution



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence - Conquest Route, Dreams/Nightmares, F/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Introspection, Potential Plot Spoilers, Pseudo-Incest, Tragedy, Vignettes, if your faves don't die at least once i probably did something wrong tbh, kinda AU-ish to be honest, minor(?) character death(s), questionable hurt/comfort tactics, this is war guys there is so much death and i am Not Sorry, trying out the localized names, you can never have enough death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-05-29 15:58:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6383077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postfixrevolution/pseuds/postfixrevolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can’t wash the feeling of her blood off his hands, just like he can’t erase the sensation of her lips ghosting over his, fingers fluttering across his skin. She's imprinted on him like a brand on wax, and he’s never felt more pliable - so easily torn and tugged this way and that - than when she catches his eye, and his breath <i>stops</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the way you say destiny sends a shiver down my spine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It begins with magic under his fingertips and crimson eyes brighter than the stars themselves, and he's enraptured, enamored, and so irrevocably in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started this before the Fates release, but got distracted by playing Fates, but here I am (finally), back from the dead to write again! Hopefully you guys enjoy this, haha, and I hope your favorites all die~~ ^u^
> 
> Beta read by the wonderful [fledermauss](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fledermauss). Her Awakening works are beautiful, and I suggest you go check them out!

_Breathe in._

Leo sees the streaks of  light behind his closed eyelids before they form, crackling and restless and _alive_ . Life cannot be created - he knows this, he’s read it, a hundred upon hundred times in his books - but he feels like he is holding his very own lifeform in his hands when he calls upon the words of his tome, pulling some sort of ageless livelihood from nothing, and _creating life._

_Out._

The sensation ebbs into the tips of his fingers, setting the nerve endings alight with pulsing and energy, filling him to the brim (and higher) with an exhilarating power. It crackles and hisses, begging to be let out of its fleshy cage. He holds it back with willpower alone, soaking in the scent of magic that stains the air around him. (It’s heady, dizzying, and Leo’s never felt more alive.)

_In._

Leo draws his hand closer to himself, cradling the turbulent sensation in his curled fingers. His earthen eyes fly open, landing on their target with hawk-like precision. There is a brief moment, almost unnoticeable, when his prey’s eyes notice his own and they freeze, wide-eyed and terrified, like a deer in the face of an arrow. A smirk curls up at his lips.

_Out._

His hand flies forward like a whip, Brynhildr erupting from his fingertips like a beast from hell. The energy leaves him like the release of a long held breath, bursting out with both a sense of relief and loss; Leo can breathe easily past the absence of building pressure in his chest, but laments the loss of the all-consuming adrenaline of power at his fingertips all the same. His eyes follow the path of his spell - it flies true, as expected - and when it hits his target, there is only the tail end of a surprised gasp before silence, and knees hitting the ground.

Leo turns around, inhales deeply through his nose. The smell of Brynhildr’s signature unearthly wood fades quickly, gives way to that of carrion, of battle and blood and brutality, but Leo just turns around and sets sharp earthen eyes on his next target. Their eyes lock and his smirk grows.

War has never felt so much like a game.

* * *

Corrin joins the fray with glinting crimson eyes and a wicked smile. He’s rendered breathless the first time he catches her brandishing her sword against the enemy, skillfully spinning circles around their attacks, cutting them down with a grace so incongruous to the savagery of her actions.

When her eyes meet his, he’s never felt so off-kilter, so dizzy and so alight, and he’s almost bowled over by the way she can affect him so instantaneously; he could forget himself to the sway of her winter white hair, receive a sword through his stomach, and still be lost in the mesmerizing flutter of her butterfly lashes. Ragnarok burns behind his fingers for a moment too long with her gaze on his, and only when he feels his fingers begin to boil and blister does he remember himself, recalls the incantation on his lips and the enemy before him. The spell is a burst of blinding red, yellows, and smoke, and he urges his horse forward, following the scarlet trail she leaves in her wake until he finds _her._

Crimson eyes light up when they see him, a heart-stopping smile blossoming on her face. She sprints forward, throwing her sword skyward as she vaults over another Hoshidan soldier, throwing his weight to the ground and catching her weapon in time to sheathe it in his vulnerable back. When Corrin wrenches the sword back out, it is followed by an elegant arc of scarlet, staining the soldier’s red tunic an even darker shade. She tilts her head up, brushes hair from her eyes, and Leo follows the streak of sanguine that she paints across the pristine strands.

Blood can smear across her palms and war can cling like a desperate fog to her skin, but there is a beauty to her that is immutable.

“Leo,” she breathes giddily, an exhilarated smile still emblazoned across her face.

Her chest rises and falls with exertion, sweat clinging to the curves and valleys of her face under the unforgiving summer sun. She grins up at him, leaning on the sword whose tip she has embedded in the earth. “Fancy seeing you here, Brother,” she jokes breathily, and there is no part of him that cannot return the warmth, a small smile of his own twitching up at thin lips. She makes him feel like an idiot when she grins and he cannot help but grin back, mouth twitching up in smiles that he can only muster when they are for her.

He chuckles despite himself, unable to fight the contagious nature of her laughter, and it hits him like Thoron how _in love_ with this girl he is. Leo grabs onto his reins tightly, his tome falling uselessly between his legs, and feel his horse nicker restlessly at the twitch of his handler. There is a euphoria that she instills in him just by being there, one that feels like a sudden reminder that the world is spinning faster than they can feel, except he _can_ feel it; it is the skyrocket of his pulse when her fingertips brush his skin, the overdrive of his brain at the heady scent of ancient magic, the weightlessness of his entire person when she smiles and he forgets what he was thinking, or if he’s ever known how to think at all.

He’s so in love with this girl, all beautiful ferocity and bloody perfection, and it’s _terrifying_.

“It must be fate, Sister,” he quips just as breathily back, heart swelling when she laughs, a sound almost too mellifluous for this cacophonous battlefield.

“Fate wouldn’t be this kind,” she says, eyes twinkling as she pulls her sword back out of the ground, twirling it in a complicated motion to get it back into a battle ready grip. “How about _destiny_?”

A shiver runs down his spine at her words - inexplicable, indescribable, exhilarating - but he still nods through it, agrees with every fiber of his heart and soul.

“Destiny it is,” he responds. She grins at him and he gallops off.

* * *

There is a moment when your life flashes before your eyes. For Leo, he’s not sure what this is. Behind his eyes there is only crimson and scarlet - the color of her irises, the shade of her blood - and they stain images of her smile and winter-white hair a sickening sanguine. He blinks harshly, and there it is again: bleeding, beating red. Maybe it _is_ his life flashing before his eyes, he thinks hysterically. She _is_ his life: hair whiter and a thousand times softer than the winter snow they played in as children, laughter like the feeling of sun on his skin when spring fights past the haze of winter to find them once more; she’s the playful whisper that tickles his skin in the autumn breeze and the earth that clings to his skin when they spar in summer, sweat-soaked and panting, and she tackles him into the dusty ground. Leo sees his life flash before his eyes through Corrin, and nothing could ever be so terrifying, so frighteningly true.

He opens his eyes, and reality greets him, blurrily fast and blindingly bright. Corrin is pressed up against his chest, blood from the gaping wound across her head slick against his neck and soaking past the chinks in his armor. Leo urges his mount as carefully quick as he can, galloping desperately for the medical tent. To either side of his flank, Odin and Niles cover his escape, spells and throwing knives against an ocean of soldiers eager to claim the Nohrian royals’ lives, but their efforts barely register past the bubbling, festering panic that drowns out any last remnants of rationality in the prince’s head. All he knows is that he needs to get help, and he needs it _now_.

She’s barely breathing in his arms, the faint rise and fall of her chest nearly incongruous from the jerking and jumping of his steed as he races across the war-stained fields. Leo can feel the warm trickle of her blood down his chest and into his tunic; it’ll stain, he realizes, a fact he wouldn’t care about except for the fact that it is her blood and it will serve as a reminder of the vibrant life that once flowed in her veins, only to come spilling out across the earth and his skin. He’d have to burn the fabric, or maybe just throw himself into the flames with it. There wouldn’t be a difference if those messy red stains were all to be left of her.

There’s the high-pitched whinnying of his horse, and Leo is forced back into reality as his mount screeches to a halt. He grips to the reigns desperately as a blast of magic slices past them, causing his steed to falter. Just before them, a single mage waits in their way, harsh roseate eyes, a fierce smile on her delicate features, and two scrolls to her name, one tucked under her arm and the other hovering right before her. Leo fumbles for his own tome, blood-coated fingers sliding carelessly along the slick, leather binding, but the book is blown out of his hands before he can even open it.

“My fortunes told me you Nohrian fiends won’t be going anywhere today!” the girl says wickedly, and Leo can smell the scent of magic in the air before it erupts from his hands; Calamity Gate sprints toward them at blinding speeds, and the crimson behind his eyes is drowned out by the maroon glow of chaos magic, dizzyingly bright. Leo closes his eyes and sees runes and purple: spring at the castle, when he was only four and stole his mother’s tomes, showed off spells to Corrin and destroyed half the castle gardens. Somehow, though, the magic never hits them. The prince opens his eyes to see straw colored hair and verdant eyes; Odin grits bloodied teeth, staunches a gaping wound in his arm with one hand and holds open Nosferatu in the other. Leo watches numbly as the dark mage squares off with the Hoshidan soldier, foreign words once to natural to him registering as hazy mumbles.

“Prince Leo, _go!_ ” Odin screams. Leo blinks dizzily, watches his retainer get thrown to the ground by a powerful barrage of Paper. He pushes himself unsteadily back to his feet, coughing out splatters of scarlet, and meets Leo’s earthen eyes almost frantically. “ _GO!”_ the man roars, and Leo doesn’t even have a second to blink before Odin sends a lightning-fast spell his way, nips at his horse’s heels with Ember and sends the prince off again. Leo’s hands grasp for the reins automatically, and he only has a split second to glance back before he’s forced to turn forward. Odin watches his lord and his fellow guard sprint off with something almost akin to wistfulness, and the last thing earthen eyes get to see is the blur of golden and maroon as Odin is toppled like a rag doll, head falling to the ground with enough force to make Leo’s own spin.

He grips the reins desperately, fingernails cutting into his palms, adding more blood to the porcelain canvas of his skin: his blood and Corrin’s, Odin’s and the blood of the countless Hoshidan soldiers that Leo’s willowy hands have struck down. He tries to focus on the sound of her breathing, the rise and fall of her chest against his, but it’s unintelligible past the bounce of his horse, the clamor of hoofsteps and Niles’s shouts beside him. Leo can’t tell if Corrin is still breathing, still _alive_ , but he prays that she is; he begs the gods repentance so that they might deem him worthy to listen to, and then he prays that Corrin will make it out of this alive, even if it takes his life, even if it takes the world.

* * *

When Corrin wakes up for the first time since sustaining her injuries, there is only the dull thud of a book to the ground before she is enveloped in a swift hug, slender arms trembling ever so slightly around her shoulders, a face buried deep into the soft cotton shoulder of her tunic. Leo holds to her tightly, mindful to avoid touching her injuries, but refusing to let go nonetheless. She’s so wonderfully _alive_ in his arms, breaths slow but steady over the top of his head, arms wrapped carefully around his own form.

He doesn’t care that he wouldn’t normally hold her for this long, doesn’t care that there is crippling and desperate relief so plainly in the shuddering of his arms around her, the shakiness of his breath from his lips. All Leo cares about is how there are no scarlet stains across their skin as they are now, no enemies on their tail and no death just one misstep ahead of them; there’s just Corrin and her warmth and the dizzying, unfading scent of magic that permeates her being, reminding him that she’s still alive.

“Thank the gods,” he breathes against her shoulder, sighs gratefully into the soft cotton of her tunic. Leo feels her shift ever so slightly, turning her head toward his and placing light, careful fingers against the back of his neck. The touch is soft - _ghostlike_ , his traitorous mind whispers - and he hugs her a bit tighter for it, relishing him her solidity, her warmth. He could never be reminded of how alive she is enough.

“I almost died,” she whispers softly, fingers stilling at the base of his skill. Her fingernails graze so slightly against the skin there, wispy and distracting, and Leo wouldn’t have caught her too-quiet words had he not been so close, face buried in her shoulder and spindly arms entwined around her form. He pulls himself away at her words, not far enough to be considered gone, but putting enough distance between them so he can gaze at her face, trace the healing cuts that still litter it from battles past. His fingers move to cup the side of her face, running his thumb along the thin scar that lies right beneath her brow, and at his careful touch her crimson eyes latch onto his, wide-eyed and _terrified_ . His heart stops for a second - _“I almost died,”_ she whispers again, so fragile, so soft - and then he feels it burst right back into action, beating, breaking, _aching_ for this girl before him.

Corrin gazes at him with tears glazing over the stunning crimson of her irises and he’s never felt more alive than he does now, relief upon desperation upon all-consuming rapture all threatening to boil over in his veins. It is like this that he wrenches her forward, crashes his lips against hers with only raw emotion to urge him on; logic falls to pieces behind the curve of her lips, the way her tears cascade and splash against his own cheeks when she cradles his head with her slender hands, tilts his mouth closer and tangles spindly fingers into his choppy, blond hair.

If her words are fragile, so soft and so timorous, she kisses him with all the force left behind, hunger and desperation so obvious in the tight curl of her fists, the way she pulls him close until he is on the bed beside her, with her half in his lap and her long winter-white hair mussed over both his shoulders and hers. Their bodies fit together so painfully perfect, lips as if they were two pieces of the same puzzle, and when Leo runs his teeth across the swell of hers, he remembers the way they curved around _i almost died_ , how her crimson eyes shone with fear and how his heart _shattered_ at the sight. He kisses her harder, feels her soft moan hum between their mouths - a dull, pleasant buzz almost akin to alcohol and he’s drunk, addicted - and lets her tears run down his own cheeks, dripping onto the fabric over his heart with pinpoint accuracy, as if her love-stained sorrows could mend the way his heart breaks and beats for her every day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally planned for this to be one piece, but then it got too long... And I might not...be...completely done yet.... But hopefully having this published will encourage me to finish!!
> 
> Comments make me write faster; scientifically proven.


	2. the life you breathe into me (and the lives we have lost)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It continues with crimsons of every shade, with new blood spilled and old blood drying, and they're just two people, but with the weight of the world upon them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone left such nice comments, ahhh!! I'm still reeling, heh, and I hope you all enjoy this next chapter~ I had fun writing it, hehe.....
> 
> Beta read by the awesome and astounding [fledermauss](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fledermauss). Her Awakening works are honestly amazing, and I suggest you go check them out~!

He bolts up in a cold sweat, terror grabbing by the vocal cords and sealing his throat shut, cutting off air, bile,  _ screams _ . His heart is a messy amalgamation of rabbit-like beats, pounding painfully in his chest, and Leo doubles over on himself, coughing violently. When his throat clears and he is finally able to draw in breath, it is a weak one, short and tremulous in his aching throat. To his open eyes, there is only silver darkness, the color of sickly moonlight crawling in through the small seam in his curtains and painting his room in shades of black. Behind his closed eyes, there is red in every shade: the brilliance of Corrin’s stark irises, blinking blearily with war-heavy exhaustion; the heat of battlefield flames, Ragnarok under his fingers, Dragon Spirit under the enemy’s; the slick stickiness painted across his fingers and palms, growing darker every time he strikes someone down. There’s no escape for him, in dreams or reality, behind closed eyes or in plain sight. 

Leo sighs shakily. It was a nightmare again, as it always is. He doesn’t remember what it feels like to dream, or if he ever had to begin with. His sleep is plagued by war-time images that feel too real to be imagined, too sharp to exist anywhere other than before open, woken eyes. Somehow, it’s always the same scene, too. He presses palms against his eyes, tries violently to shake the images away. His eyes begin to ache and his mind starts spinning when he finally calms down, but the images still swim there, invading the caverns of his mind like a stubborn fog.

The battlefield is silent. His tome is always at his feet, pages singed beyond recognition and slowly crumbling to ash. His sword is tossed far away to his left, abandoned and covered in blood, and his sword arm throbs with a vengeance he can’t describe. Sometimes, he has time to glance down at it, to feel bile climb its way up his choked throat at the sight of the burnt, mutilated flesh, reeking of death and backfired magic. His horse is never anywhere to be seen, lost somewhere in the mess of battle, and a sharp pain always jolts up his left calf as he tries to walk on it. 

Whether he starts east or west first, limps his way south or north, he always trips over the same dead body as he tries to wrap his injured arm with the remnants of his cape. Sometimes it’s earlier than he remembers, sometimes later, but earthen eyes never catch sight of the familiar dark skin and alabaster hair until he is sprawled out on the floor beside him, staring into one glazed cobalt eye. Leo often wonders if Niles’s body waits until he is unaware to materialize at his feet, to send him careening into the sharp pebbles once more. It’s torturous every time, the jagged rocks digging into the damaged flesh of his arm, squeezing their way into the chinks of his battered armor, but somehow, the image of Niles is worse, scarlet staining the once-deep blues of his clothes, sending a jolt like electricity up his spine and forcing a sharp breath through his nose. Leo backpedals as if burned, and the thief's single good eye watches him almost mockingly, left open in death, as if to let the dead see what it could no longer have.

Pushing himself up, Leo stumbles away as fast as his bum leg can take him after that. What he finds next is no better; it’s always Elise, but when he heads left, she is with Camilla, and when he rushes off right, the youngest princess lies dead beside Xander. Either way, it’s the same scene: Elise is hunched over her older sibling with a staff in her hand, a lance wedged in her back. Leo never checks to see if she died with her eyes closed or open. 

Xander always looks like he had died the most peacefully, chocolate brown eyes closed and lips set into the barest ghost of a dissatisfied frown. There is little difference between his expression in death and that of when he lived, but the scarlet that stains his chest tells all that Leo needs to know, pooling sickly beneath the unmoving bodies of both him and his youngest sister. He must have died protecting her, and her, healing him, and Leo finds Xander’s sword embedded in the back of a Hoshidan soldier just feet away, the blue-haired woman’s roseate irises widened in shock.

Camilla is the complete opposite. Her lavender eyes are opened wide, a latent terror painted across her delicate features and turning the entire image ugly. There is not a visible scratch on her, but her wyvern lies a few feet away, a barrage of arrows wedged into its hide, and Leo wonders from how high his oldest sister had fallen. With Camilla, Elise’s staff is discarded by her side, and Leo doesn’t need to look to know that there are tear tracks down the youngest girl’s cheeks, struck down in a defenseless moment of lament in the middle of a merciless battlefield. The Hoshidan soldier and her lance are nowhere in the vicinity when this happens. He never walks left after the first time, but seeing a dead Camilla without Elise is no better.

It is at this point that Leo usually wakes up, clothes soaked in icy sweat. He had thrown up the first time he made it this far, and the first time he saw Niles, the first time he noticed his arm. The only time he hadn’t thrown up was when he made it to the end. That doesn’t happen often - he’s usually jarred awake sometime after Camilla’s lifeless corpse, when he tries to run away from the gory scene only to trip over his injured leg, to careen toward the earth and wake with a start - but the first time it did, he had woken up more scared than he’d been since he was a child, still so ignorantly convinced of the night terrors that lurked under his bed. After that, he’d stumbled dizzily to Corrin’s room, knocked on her door and begged her with tears staining the timbre of his voice to let him stay. She didn’t say anything then, but let him in, and let him cling to her desperately as he tried to memorize her warmth and forget the feeling of finding her lifeless on the ground, blood drained from her skin and skin cold as ice.

Even now, the image is burned into his eyes: her skin as colorless as her hair, cold as the winter-white shade that the silken locks love to emulate. There are rips in her armor everywhere, blood leaking from cuts across her cheeks, arms, torso, and the worst part is the sword that sheathed so perfectly into her chest, still crackling with cyan electricity, the live arcs making a mockery of her long-dead form. Leo shudders, the reason purely unrelated from cold, and stumbles out of his bed, presses the soles of his feet against the frigid stone floor. When he reaches his door, he stops, fingers barely brushing against the smooth surface of his metal doorknob. It’s just as cold as Corrin’s dead skin, nipping at the nerves in his fingertips, and he hesitates. 

She could be sleeping peacefully right now, blissfully unaware of the stench of war that hangs around Nohr, around Hoshido, around them all. Dreams are the only safe haven any of them have left, even if they have drifted far out of Leo’s reach long ago. He can’t take that from her, can’t steal from her slender fingers what little semblance of serenity she may have left. Leo lowers his hand. With heavy feet and a heavier heart, he trudges back to his bed, buries himself underneath his sheets, and doesn’t sleep a wink.

The next day, she looks at him sadly, traces the dark circles beneath his earthen eyes. He doesn’t meet her gaze, and she is gone before the warmth she sighs against his porcelain cheeks can fully fade away. 

* * *

There’s a sharp gasp and the sickening  _ shhk _ of steel embedding itself into flesh, a cry of pain and the thud of a body toward the ground. Leo whips around, and Silas’s pale fingers are pressed up against a messy laceration across the bicep of his sword arm, leaking scarlet across the dark fabric and his skin. At his feet there is blood, pooling beneath the shaking form of the Hoshidan soldier lying there, the woman’s twitching fingers curled gingerly around the sword sheathed in her stomach. Leo glances from his newest retainer to the woman, and when he looks at her, her eyes flicker up, startling carmine locking onto his with a vice-like suddenness. There is hatred in those eyes, past the blood that is spattered across her face and painted on her teeth, beneath the shadow of death that hovers over her irises, drawing her closer with every drop of blood she loses. 

“ _ Nohrian d-dogs _ ,” she whispers shakily. “You’ll d-die, every last one of you. My Lord Takumi… He’ll make sure of it.”

Her form falls limp just as this telltale whiz of an arrow flies past, and Leo hisses, a sudden burning sensation erupting across his arm. The tome he had held in that hand clatters to the ground just as another arrow comes soaring in, catching him directly in the shoulder. There is no escaping the sharp exclamation of pain that bursts past his lips at that, and his opposite hand flies up to the spot immediately, ripping out the buried steel tip with a swift clamp of his jaw and the sudden taste of metal flooding his mouth. His retainer is quicker to recover from the onslaught than he is, and Silas tears his sword out of the dead woman’s carcass, flicking blood across his boots and the earth, swinging the blade up and deflecting the next arrow off the flat of it. The resounding clang is painful against his eardrums, but it shocks Leo back to reality, and he grasps for his tome with his uninjured arm, wrapping blood-stained fingers around its worn cover; he flips hurriedly through the yellowed pages as his earthen eyes scan his surroundings for the next attack, adrenaline slowly instilling a restless edge into his every movement. 

Another whiz and Leo steps sharply to the side, watching with wide earthen eyes as an arrow speeds just past his cheek, slicing the flesh and sending hot blood dripping down his jaw. His head whips in the direction of the arrow to see a figure in cobalt sprinting toward him, a golden bow in his left hand and an arrow in the other. Silas shoves him out of the way as the arrow slices through the very air he had just occupied, finding its way into the flesh of Silas’s shoulder rather than his own. The knight’s shove pushes Leo far from the scene, and he’s forced to watch as the archer barrels directly into Silas, the force of his tackle sending the other boy flying.

At that, Leo gasps despite himself, a sharp hiss of a breath, cold air against his tongue, and watches as the knight falls to the ground. Everything is slowed in that moment, and earthen eyes see the way verdant ones widen as his body accepts the force of the blow, how eyelids crush themselves shut as his head collides with the hard earth. The arrow lodged in his shoulder snaps against the unforgiving ground, and Silas chokes out a pained gasp, eyes flying open. Leo takes one panicked step forward just as the other boy - barely the blond’s own age, by the looks of it, with harsh hazel eyes and long hair the color of winter rain clouds - slams a foot down on Silas’s chest, points his bow right down toward him. The knight coughs weakly, twines pallid fingers around the Hoshidan soldier’s ankle.

“ _You_ ,” the boy mutters lowly. “You killed Oboro!” His hazel eyes spark with a flame worthy of Bolganone, dangerously intense in their raging fury, and he nocks an arrow, aims it directly toward the knight’s face. Silas doesn’t stare death in the face, turns away from hazel eyes and let’s his head roll to the side, meeting Leo’s gaze with tragically bright verdant eyes. 

“R-run, Prince Leo,” he urges weakly. “Corrin needs you more, but tell her- tell her I loved her, and my life was… always hers.” The archer digs his heel into Silas’s chest and he coughs, splatters blood against the porcelain surface of his skin. 

“You Nohrian scum disgust me,” the Hoshidan spits, and as Leo blinks, he shoots. The arrow lodges itself into Silas’s greener-than-spring iris and splatters blood across the dusty earth and the archer’s shoe. He dies with his eyes wide open and Corrin’s memory on his lips, and Leo feels sick at the thought. His spindly fingers begin to shake as he tears open his tome, foreign words spilling from his lips like blood from the cuts across his skin, from the new, gaping hole in Silas’s head. The archer narrows his own eyes at him, pulls back another arrow with a sneer. “You are nothing,” he snarls venomously, but Leo doesn’t hear his words past the delicious crackle of electricity underneath his fingers, the buzz of barely uncontrollable magic just behind his temples. 

It happens simultaneously; Mjolnir flies from his fingertips like a beast from hell, and the arrow swishes forward with a graceful sharpness, slicing the very air before it. All earthen eyes see after that is an explosion of gold, feels the heat of lightning burst in the air around him before it is gone, replaced by the cool tang of winter air. There is no arrow lodged into his skull, a disgusting parallel to the knight that had just given his life to him, but there is the scorched splinters of one at his toes and the smell of scorched flesh before him. The afterimages of his blindingly bright Mjolnir give way to hazel eyes and scarlet, and the archer falls to his knees with terror across his sharp features and a still sizzling lightning bolt lodged in his chest. The boy breathes out shakily.

“ _ You _ ,” he gasps shudderingly, “You deserve a f-fate worse than death. May the gods… curse you.”

He falls to the ground as Leo chokes out a trembling breath, stares at the still-shaking length of his willowy fingers. They still crackle faintly, electricity arcing across the cool surface of his gloves, and he struggles to curve them around the worn cover of his tome. There are three dead at his feet, two Hoshidans and a knight of Nohr, and all he has to show for it is the long dried scarlet that coats his left arm and the unshakeable tremor that grips to his pathetic hands like a vice. Earthen eyes land on Silas’s lifeless form once more, the arrow sticking straight out of his skull as if it were some sort of twisted headstone, and Leo doubles over, throwing up over his toes and the burnt splinters of a broken arrow. 

_ Tell her I loved her _ , Silas’s voice echoes tinnily in his head. Leo forces out a shaky breath, spits the taste of bile and metal out from his mouth. Closing his eyes, he sees the color of hers: crimson and scarlet and identical to the blood that stains the earth, his friends, his hands, yet so, so different. He can’t tell her, he realizes, not when  _ he  _ loves her, when the real reason Silas had died for him hangs as heavy in the air as the stench of burnt flesh and fresh blood; where the knight had known his place in the princess’s life, the prince still grasps desperately after the tail ends of her winter-white hair while she does nothing but march onward in the battlefield and stare forward at her destiny. 

* * *

Leo ends up whispering it into the curve of her neck that night, breath like Ember against her skin, lips brushing against the silky and sun-stained gold of her bare flesh:  _ he loved you, gave his life for you. _ Her fingers tighten painfully around the fabric of his shirt, nails pressing into the skin of his chest, and she cries out as much as she gasps, breath hitching and sob catching in her throat. Leo hates himself for it, loathes Silas as he loathes himself, but he cups her face in his hands, swipes at the beginnings of tears with his thumbs and breathes it again over the swell of her lips.

_ He loved you and lived for you and  _ died  _ for you. _

Her tears brim over, catch on the tips of his thumbs and trail stickily down the ridges of his hand, and Corrin pulls up at the hem of his shirt, marking his war-bruised skin with desperate fingers as she marks his lips with her own, with the fire-hot tears that cascade from her crimson eyes. She tastes like tears this time, tears and remnants of the sweet wine from supper, and he takes it all in, greedily slanting his mouth over hers and running his tongue along the seam of her lips. For all her urgency, she is glasslike in his hands, trembling under the searing heat of his palms against her cool, golden skin. 

Leo tries to be gentle, willowy fingers so flutteringly light over the plane of her stomach, tugging lightly at the hem of her tunic, but she is quick to encircle hands around his wrists, to tangle the fabric of her tunic in his own fingers and lift the thing over her head, letting it fall to the floor behind them. She’s resplendent even now, scars scattered over her flesh like misplaced constellations, shadow filling in every curve of her body that moonlight glances over, and painting her in striking ebony and silver. He traces the still pink gash that runs from the top of her ribcage and across her stomach, follows the old wound until it dives under the waistband of her tights, curves to a stop right along the swell of her hips. 

Earthen eyes stare into hers curiously, catalogue the downcast look of them, the small frown that weighs down the corners of her mouth as he traces her scars, feels the war-worn texture of them beside what unmarred flesh she still has left to boast. 

“I’m so sorry,” she mutters, blinking up at him dolefully. “That you’re in the middle of this. That you’re forced to shoulder the burden of two others when they should carry their own.” There is a small tremor in her voice, shaky with the remnants of tears, still there, still clinging to her eyelashes like a stubborn morning dew. Leo feels it worm its way into his chest, dig its vicious, tiny teeth into the muscle of his blood pumping organ - tiny wounds that would be nothing on their own - but they collect with every desperate tremble from Corrin’s lips, tearing and twisting and  _ aching _ in his chest. 

“Even I can’t fill the space he’s left in your heart, can I?” he asks her. Her lips twitch into a frown, the fingers playing with his hair stilling. Her sigh is soundless, but he feels it fan out across his face, dizzyingly warm breath over his cool skin.

“I don’t know how much of a heart I have left to fill,” she admits softly, the tail end of a humorless laugh adding false levity to her words. 

He looks at her sadly, traces the curve of her cheek that her tears would always follow, right down to the tip of her chin. She leans into his touch, half lidded eyes and heavy exhalations, and Leo stills, carefully lies her down so that her back is against the silk of his sheets, her winter-white hair spreading around her like a pallid halo. She opens her eyes at that, long eyelashes fluttering open to reveal raw, tired crimson, the aftermath of tears still evident in them, and he gazes back, stares into the endless red of her irises and counts each individual eyelash. Leo commits her visage to memory with a diligence that surprises even himself, and when he blinks, her image is still there, burned into the back of his eyelids. 

Carefully, he leans over her, presses his lips against the same scar he had just traced with his fingers. Corirn’s breath hitches, her fingers fly to the back of his neck, fingernails ghosting over the sensitive expanse of skin there. He feels her skin heat up where he touches it, relishes in the buzz of ravenous energy that her soft gasps instill in him, and he follows the line of that scar, fingers anxiously pulling her leggings down from her waist as he traces the blemish with kisses to the soft, disjointed rhythm of her breath. The kisses aren’t much different than the tender ones he presses against the crown of her head when they’re alone, the quick slant of his lips against her own when they are on the battlefield and he needs to remember that she’s alive, real,  _ his _ \- but he feels warmth coil tighter in his stomach the further he goes, kissing every slowly-healing inch of her scar until his lips ghost over the smooth flesh over her hip and she gasps, arching into his touch like she never has before. 

His name tumbles from her lips like a plea, fingers twisting almost painfully into the short hair at the base of his neck, and he nips again at the thin flesh over her bones, the moan from her throat surprising them both, blurring his vision with a sudden desire, the need to have his name gasped like that again - sighed against the curve of his neck, breathed into the shell of his ear. 

“Say it again,” he murmurs lowly, whispers into the curve of her hip, pulls her leggings away so that he can press his palms against the silky skin of her thighs. Corrin shifts underneath him, presses her legs tightly together, and Leo rests one hand against them, traces circles over her inner thigh and listens to her  _ gasp _ . 

“ _ Leo _ ,” she breathes out heavily, and his name on her lips make his head  _ spin _ . She wrenches him back up, crashes her lips against his with greedy fingers in his hair, sliding nails down his chest and leaving fire in their wake. She undoes the buckle of his belt smoothly, tosses the leather strap to the side and begins to pull down at his own pants, fingertips cool against his already searing skin. His fingers are restless, carding through her silken hair, flittering across her skin in search of the fabric of her bra, the small clasp that keeps it attached to her body. When they are forced to break apart for air, her chest is heaving and her eyes half lidded, the swell of her breasts brushing against his chest with each breath. Leo makes quick work of occupying his lips, lining the curve of her neck with soft kisses and sharper teeth, hungry nips that will doubtlessly brand her porcelain skin for days to come.

She gasps softly at his ministrations, the sensation of his teeth kneading her skin doing little to allay the insatiable urgency of her breath, and Leo slips his hands behind her back, unhooks her bra and slips it fluidly from her shoulders, eager to explore the newly bared skin with his lips, teeth, tongue. Her fingers are cool against the back of his neck, tangled in the strands of his hair and brushing against his scalp, but the rest of her is burning - wonderfully, searingly hot - and she arches into him, drags herself even closer to the heat of his own skin. Leo lets himself hover over the swell of her breast, breathes humid, heavy breaths over her, and when he presses his lips to the softness of her skin, teeth so softly pulling at the flesh beneath them,  _ gods _ is the moan that tumbles past her lips sinful. 

“Kiss me,” she breathes, digs fingernails into his scalp and tilts his head up to face hers. He stares at her, at the dizzy flutter of her eyelids and the scarlet flush on her cheeks.  “I want… I want you to kiss me.” He pulls himself up, meets her face to face, so close that their lips brush with every breath taken. Corrin looses her grip on his hair, splays fingers out over the back of his head and pushes his lips to hers. “I want  _ you _ ,” she murmurs, breathes it into the hollow of his mouth, and he feels his heartbeat stumble over itself at the sound; his mind is blank save for Corrin, the feeling of her bare skin against his, the flutter of her long eyelashes over crimson eyes so beautifully bleary with dizziness, desire, and he kisses her - hard - aligns their lips like two seamless pieces of a puzzle.

She melts into him, quick to respond, to tilt her head to accommodate his. There is a desperation in the way she kisses him, fingers curled around the base of his neck as if he could leave at any moment, pull back to never return. Leo tries his best to kiss that fear away, cup her face gently and play idly with the short hair of her bangs. When they separate, it is only for air, only to let their lungs recover from the stolen moments of shared breath, when Leo’s lungs were only filled with her, when Corrin’s were only filled with him. She exhales deeply, warmth fanning across his face with the tenderness of a warm summer breeze, and he stares at crimson eyes past half lidded ones of his own. They are bleary, still disoriented and dizzy from the kiss, but he’s reminded so easily of the tears she had just shed when he looks into them, sees the raw roseate that stains her sclera. Earthen eyes slide shut, and he leans his forehead down on hers. 

“Say you love me,” he whispers, eyes forced shut. He doesn’t want to see sadness strike her crimson irises like lightning, wiping away any remaining bleariness, widening her eyes and forcing a soft gasp from her lips. “That you value me enough to never let your own life be taken in exchange for my own. That you won’t forfeit your life so easily, as he did for me.”

There’s a moment’s pause and Leo bites back the beginnings of a frown. The action becomes easier when Corrin takes his face in her hands, cool fingers soothing against the fire-hot flush of his skin. He leans into her touch tiredly. She is gentle, treating him like  _ he _ is the one made of glass, fragile and precious, and and he feels his heart ache at the thought, at her unfaltering kindness. Her thumbs trace the circles beneath his eyes, pausing at the corners and holding his face steady. She pulls him down gently, presses a chaste kiss on his lips. The pads of her thumbs move to rest atop his eyelids, urging them carefully up, and when Leo lets them flutter open, she is all he can see, soft eyes and a melancholic smile painted silver by the moonlight. 

“Of course I love you, Leo.” She removes her hands from his face, trails fingers down his shoulders and arms until they find his wrists, tugging them out from underneath him. He falls against her, chest to chest, and her bare skin is warm against his own. Corrin takes his hands in her own, brings them up to her lips and presses a kiss against both of his palms. “Whatever heart I do have left is yours, and you hold it in these hands of yours; don’t ever forget that.”

“And if I tell you not to go, to protect your own life as I protect your heart?” he asks, timorously and soft. Her eyes do crack this time, sadness flashing across them for just a moment - enough for his heart to shatter alongside them - before the fleeting emotion is gone. 

“A princess’s life belongs to her people,” she tells him quietly. Her crimson eyes don’t quite meet his.

“But what does that mean for her heart?”

Silence. Kamui doesn’t respond, instead snaking lithe arms around his neck, tugging his face into the curve of her shoulder and hugging him tightly. He lets her, winds willowy arms around her own waist and presses a long-lingering kiss against her skin. A response never comes, no matter how long he waits for it; Leo falls asleep in Kamui’s arms and wakes up tangled in cold sheets, the fading scent of ancient magic the only remaining vestige of her presence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> laughs weakly...... I'm okay...... This is okay..............
> 
> (casually self promos self on twitter @princeleons .... it's lots of fe:fates and me screaming... sometimes i like to aggressively headcanon things...?)


	3. let our victory call grate deafly against my bleeding eardrums

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is a small hope, weakly kindled by short kisses that feel like an eternity, by another life lost to their cause - whatever that cause may be - and is soured by betrayal, by broken promises and beautiful lies whispered to them in dark hallways that echo with the sound of their footsteps, running away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lies on floor as i extend ~~leo and kamui's suffering~~ this fic one more chapter for the sake of plot...... Last extension, I swear!
> 
> (also four is the death number guys how could i resist)
> 
> Anyway! Unbeta-ed but spell checked, as per the norm, and, ehehe... Enjoy~

When Leo hears a shrill, girlish shriek, he instinctively whips around. Niles is right behind him - as he always is, as the cobalt-eyed man has never not been - and there is humor flickering in his one iris as he bares his blood-stained teeth, smiles a toothy smile up at his lord. The scarlet of his grin is startling, but the look in his eye is not; is that same look that always flashes in Niles's eye, the one that alights his cobalt iris when death just barely misses him, except this time, it doesn’t miss. Death cuts cleanly through his torso, a steel katana sheathed in his stomach, blood blossoming from the wound like a crimson rose, and the offense is returned equally by the arrow clenched in tanned fingers, sleek silver tip lodged into Death’s pale throat in a gruesomely perfect mirror to Niles’s own lacerated flesh. 

A striking cobalt eye never leaves his as caramel-eyed Death chokes on her own blood and invectives, a million muttered curses for her Nohrian enemies almost _tangible_ on her blood-stained tongue, and the samurai’s fingers fall limp from around their blade, grasping blindly, desperately at her neck with each dying breath. 

Leo watches the scene play out numbly, watches the samurai gracelessly fall to the ground as Niles follows suit, his knees crunching against the dusty earth as he stumbles down. The sound of footsteps barely registers in Leo’s mind, but the head of pink hair that rushes to the fallen girl’s side quickly catches his attention; Hoshido’s youngest princess falls to the ground with tears in her carmine eyes and a staff in her trembling fingers, magic pouring from her shaking lips but none of it catching the last vestiges of life that drain from caramel eyes. Leo almost feels pity for the princess, sees silver hair where there is tawny and earthen eyes where there are carmine, but the feeling quickly evanesces when the girl turns her tears stained eyes up at him, glaring past tears, past terror and shock and grief. There is nothing intimidating about the young princess, but when fiery carmine eyes lock onto his own, Leo feels his heart stop. 

“You N-Nohrians are _m-m-monsters_ ,” she whispers, and his fingers itch for Brynhildr’s electrifying buzz beneath their skin, his tongue begs for response, spiteful and sharp in the face of adversity, but nothing passes through his mind except for the realization that: there is an inexplicable grief in watching the light leave the eyes of the retainer that had watched over her since she was a child - a pain that is neither Nohrian nor Hoshidan. Leo looks into her eyes and sees a human where there is only a Hoshidan, and that burning spite in her gaze is the last thing he sees before the _whsh_ of an arrow slices through the air, lodging itself so painfully perfect into her carmine iris. Earthen eyes see verdant for a split second - steel-grey hair and Corrin’s name on his dying lips - before reality grabs him by the throat, forcing out a choked gasp as he watches the youngest princess of Hoshido fall. 

“Such is war, darling,” Niles’s voice murmurs, thick with blood, with spite-stained humor. He exhales a weak laugh. “No one is spared, especially those who would speak to my lord that way.” 

And he turns toward Leo, lazy smile on his blood-soaked lips, labored breaths puffing past them with a pain that is almost tangible in the prince’s own lungs, each inhalation burning against the walls of his throat. A phantom pain aches dully in his own chest. 

“Niles,” he mutters lowly, “Your wound--” 

The silver-haired man exhales a choppy, weak breath. His bow falls from his fingers with a muffled clatter, wood against the unforgiving ground. 

“You don’t need to say it, Milord,” he says, cobalt eye gazing up at him ruefully, cobalt iris as striking as ever. “Don’t think of it as a comrade lost, but an insignificant toy soldier that’s too broken to play with anymore.” He exhales a weak laugh at the thought. “This sad life was always yours anyway.” 

“No,” Leo exhales. “You’re no toy soldier; you’re so much more--” 

“Don’t do that to a dying man,” Niles rasps. “Hope is for the living.” He coughs, scarlet flying from his bloodied lips and splattering sanguine constellations over the dusty earth, and lowers himself down onto his knee, swaying precariously on his already trembling legs. The katana still lies embedded in his stomach, blood seeping into the fabric around it, staining the lavender a dark burgundy. Leo swallows down the need to throw up. “I only have one last request. Won’t you put an old sufferer out of his misery?” 

Willowy fingers twitch along the pages of his tome, tightening around the reins of his horse until his knuckles turn winter-white. His mount shifts restlessly beneath him, nickering softly. A searing heat begins to burn behind earthen eyes, blurring the prince’s vision, but he clenches his teeth until his jaw begs for mercy, the words of Brynhildr falling numbly from his trembling lips. It’s through a veil of tears that Leo sees Niles smile at him, bloody teeth and tragic, cobalt eyes, and his world erupts in colors - the brilliant argentine and viridian of Brynhildr and the red-hot fire of tears branding tracks down his cheeks. 

His ears catch something painfully akin to a _Thank you, Milord_ , but the rushing of blood behind his ears, adrenaline and terror in equal parts, makes his head spin, his hands tremble, and Leo turns his horse away before the magic clears, blinking away remnants of silver, green, and _cobalt_ as he wills his mount forward and never looks back. 

* * *

He sits on the edge of his bed, shoulder pressed against the unforgiving wood of his headboard, earthen eyes trained on the head of winter-white hair that sits by his fireplace, and slender, porcelain fingers resting aimlessly over the black ink words that cover the book in his hands. He doesn’t read it, hasn’t read a single word since Corrin had knocked on his door halfway through his second candle for the night, eyes dull and lifeless and shadows painted darkly just underneath. There had been a defeated slump to her shoulders then, a harsh set of her chapped lips and the remnants of tear tracks on her cheeks, illuminated by the weak candlelight that he kept burning in his room. Leo let her in without a moment’s hesitation. 

She had wordlessly made a direct line for his armchair, sinking into the plush seat before the fading fire and pulling her knees up to her chest. Since then, Corrin has neither moved nor tore her eyes away from the now-dead embers, and Leo stares at the restless flickers of candlelight and shadow that dance on her sallow cheeks. 

“It’s late,” he tells her suddenly. Her lips twitch into a frown at the small utterance, but she doesn’t acknowledge him. “The war is won by now, Corrin. We have the Prince Ryoma in the prisons just below us and we must wake early to march on Hoshido’s capital.” 

Crimson eyes turn up to him at that, a harrowing pain on her normally delicate features. Her eyes are stained with tears again, glazed over and catching the candlelight before her like fire opals in the sun, and all he can do is curl his fingers tightly into his tome, internally wincing at his choice of words. 

“Is this what victory feels like, Leo?” she whispers shakily. “Like guilt eating me up from the inside out, until I feel like only a shell of who I used to be?” Corrin pulls her knees closer into herself, lying her forehead against her knees and drowning in her own disheveled waterfall of winter-white hair. Leo watches her disappear, swallowed whole by the colorless cascade that he knows by its brilliance just as he knows it by the soft feeling of it between his fingers, sliding across the war-worn pads of his fingers like the finest silk. “I wanted peace with Hoshido, but with three of its four children gone, there’s barely anything left to make peace _with_.” 

Leo slides his book shut, abandoning it on his nightstand as he rushes over, falling to his knees at the ground before her. Kamui’s form is dwarfed by the large chair she sits in, by the expanse of winter-white she hides behind, and he sweeps her hair carefully over her shoulder, cupping the side of her face with careful fingers. Since leaving the Northern Fortress what felt like years ago, her once porcelain skin has tasted sunlight like it has never before, and the gold that imbues itself into the canvas of her flesh is an eerie mirror to that of the enemy soldiers he has cut down day after day. 

“Look up, Corrin,” he urges her softly. 

She sighs, screwing her eyes shut and drawing in a deep, measured breath before exhaling and letting them flutter open. The tears that had glazed her brilliant eyes now cling onto her eyelashes, weighing down the graceful curl of them, and with a careful thumb, he brushes the liquid off of her lashes tenderly. Corrin brings a hand up to his, calloused fingers pressing against the back of his hands with the lightness of a spectre. She feels cold as the stone room they reside in, the firelight long faded away; Leo suppresses a shiver. 

“Look at me,” he murmurs again, leaning up to press his lips against her cheek. Her fingers have always been cold, cooler than the rest of her by far, but her cheek beneath his lips feels like the fire that his room lacks, the one that she whispers to him burns in her chest, tended to by his slender fingers intertwined with hers, his lips across every exposed surface of her skin. Leo leans back as crimson eyes slide up to his. 

Corrin stares at him with her mouth half parted, words almost tangible on the trembling swell of her lips, but her features are quick to twist into a grimace, mouth slamming shut and brows furrowing. She swallows down words so ready to fall from her delicate lips and lets her eyes drift shut as she leans into his hand, tormented exhaustion so evident in the crease of her brows and the tense set of her jaw. With his other hand, Leo brushes the rest of her bangs from her face, nestling the fine strands behind her ear and letting spindly fingers linger against the line of her jaw. The way she relaxes beneath his touch feels like second nature, cool fingertips trailing from his hands against her face down his arms and to his shoulders, pressing the calloused pads of them against the back of his neck. Her eyes slide open for just a moment, half-lidded crimson alit by candlelight and fatigue, only to flutter shut as she leans down and presses her lips against his, lethargic but poignant, the weight of a thousand heavy sighs in the one fire-warm breath that she breathes into his mouth. 

Leo kisses her slowly, like they have all the time in the world, rising to his feet and tugging her gently with him. She steps from her chair, leaning up on her toes to be able to keep their mouths together, leaning against him with a searing warmth and a steady weight. There is no urgency, no restless fingers and greedy teeth, and he loses himself in the scent of magic that permeates her, ancient as the dragon’s blood that flows in her veins, heady and musty in a way that makes his head spin. 

The candlelight flickers weakly, countless shades of oranges and ebonies dancing behind his closed eyelids, but he only imagines crimson and winter-white, the colors of Corrin as ever-present in his mind's eye as they are before him, in flesh and blood. Carefully, he gathers her up in his arms, hands behind her knees and at her back, and she hums softly in protest when their lips part, sighing chamomile tea against his lips as they both grasp for small bits of air before their mouths meet again. 

He sits them again at his headboard, the stiff wood pressing into his shoulder blades as she leans against him, but the discomfort forgotten in the face of her fingers curling into the fine hairs at the nape of his neck. Leo mirrors her with lazy hands playing at the ends of her hair, twisting and unfurling the soft stands at the small of her back around his fingers. When they part, it is with bleary eyes and unspoken adorations on the tail ends of their heavy breaths, fingers still twisted in each others hair and thoughts still lost in the perfect fit of their bodies and lips together. 

“No matter how this war ends, how Nohr changes,” Corrin murmurs over his lips, “I love you.” She leans her forehead against his, levels unwavering, unblinking eyes at him. “You are my constant, Leo, and no matter what happens to Hoshido, to Ryoma, you always will be.” 

Leo traces the curl of her eyelashes, the curve of her cheeks and the arch of her nose; every feature that he has blindly mapped out with fingertips and lips in a room only drenched in wan moonlight, everything that makes the woman before him Corrin, he commits to memory. Earthen eyes and a sharp mind draw out this moment in acute detail, from the shadows cast by dying candlelight across her cheek to the thin, rebellious strands of hair that refuse to stay behind her pointed ears, hanging with spiderweb-like delicacy over her crimson eyes. 

With the image stored away, he blinks, attempts again to tuck those stubborn strands behind her ears. 

"Come what may," Leo tells her, pulling her into his chest, “The future will be bright so long as we share it.” He mutters his words against the silky strands of hair atop her head, with his hands resting tenderly against her waist and her hands resting over his own, fingers encircling his wrists so that her thumb rests just above his pulse, tired and lethargic. “Be steadfast, Corrin. For however harrowing you think victory feels now, when we achieve it for true, you will know.” 

She tilts her head back until her crimson eyes can gaze into his, pauses for one tremulous moment. The candle flickers, a sure sign of its dying. “I can only hope so," she tells him, blinking tiredly. Leo meets her crimson eyes for an instant, stares into them past the curve of Corrin's fluttering eyelashes, before he tears his gaze away, looks straight across the room at the fading, flickering candle. It will sputter out soon; he buries his face against her shoulder, silky hair caressing his nose, cheeks, and closes his eyes, letting his own self-imposed shadows swallow him first. 

“Let us both hope so,” he mutters, words vibrating dully against her skin, “Because if this is truly what victory feels like, Nohr has much longer to wait before it can see the dawn.” 

* * *

“ _No!_ ” 

The buckles of his horse’s saddle slip from his fingers, and earthen eyes fly toward the direction of the scream. The throne room. It was Corrin. Leo drops everything and _runs_. 

He bursts past the throne room doors to chaos. The captured Hoshidan prince is still bound and kneeling before the throne, brown hair matted with blood and sun-stained skin painted with bruises and cuts, but a strikingly familiar series of figures lie between him and Garon. Beside Prince Ryoma is a trembling Elise; in front of him is Xander, and before Nohr’s eldest prince, a head of lavender hair on the floor, the limbs attached to it terrifyingly still and a pool of scarlet spilling out from the ebony and golds of her armor. 

Corrin kneels by the unmoving body of Camilla, blood seeping into the fabric over her hands, her knees and her forearms, but any concern is lost to to the violent trembling of her arms, scarlet fingertips shaking their fallen sister insistently, desperately. Earthen eyes land on the looming figure of his father, a scarlet-stained axe and crazed eyes, violet smoke seeping from him in malicious tendrils; there is nothing Leo can do to bite back the terror that robs him of his breath, causes him to falter at the deathly silent throne room doors. The king that stands before him is not his father, and he can’t breathe. 

“Out of the way!” Garon demands. “Anyone that stands between myself and the Hoshidan prince is no child of mine.” 

Xander winces, but holds Siegfried steadily before him, blade charged with amethyst energy, humming and crackling dangerously between the eldest prince and the beast that wears his father’s face. Garon takes a menacing step forward, and Leo fumbles with the bag at his side, shaking fingers tugging uselessly at canvas straps, digging for the familiar feeling of leather covers, the only familiarity he can imagine in a situation like this, when the castle he once knew as his home reeks of scarlet and steel. Xander’s knuckles turn winter-white from the force of his grip, pale as the hair that Leo has swept over lithe shoulders countless times, now painting itself scarlet in the pool of her sister’s own blood. 

“We’ve already _won_!” Corrin interjects- _pleads_. “The war is over; Hoshido has lost almost all of her children. Please, Father! _Please_ don’t wish any more pointless death on those that still live.” Her voice shakes with a tremor Leo has never heard before, never in her voice, so clear, so unfailingly certain. He hears the way the distress grips it with unrelenting claws, frays the edges with terror, riddles the center of it with sorrowful tears and holes. It’s no voice laden with tears, melancholy low and languid on her tongue, but it is one of desperation - panic and powerlessness. In her heart, she knows that there is something important that is gone, lost beyond reparation, and it bleeds into the timbre of her voice in a way that shakes Leo to his very core. 

Garon bristles, lunges forward with a blood-stained axe, scarlet specks flying off the gilded silver in a brutally elegant arc behind him. Crimson eyes slam closed, features screwed up in fear, but the clang of metal against metal pulls them back upon, pierces the ears of all in the room. Xander holds his blade against that of his father’s, trembling arms and clenched teeth, and deflects the blow fiercely. Garon steps back with a brief surprise, something so fleetingly human in his crazed eyes, before fury reclaims the old man, floods back in like a vengeful spirit and steals what little humanity had tried to save the king. His brother must have seen it too, so obvious in the flicker of hurt that crossed his stern features, the fallen face of the child he was never allowed to be, but that sentiment is banished before Leo can blink. A familiar sternness returns to Xander’s face, and Leo tries to find solace in that, willing his fingers back to life, finally pulling Brynhildr from the course canvas bag at his side. 

He rushes to Xander’s side. 

“Brother, I have your back,” he tells him, steels his eyes and tightens his fingers around the smooth leather of Brynhildr’s spine. “I don’t know what’s become of our Father, but I know that my loyalty lies with you before a killer that wears our father’s face.” 

Chestnut eyes find his own. Leo isn’t sure what he expects, but it isn’t what he sees, isn’t the unadulterated panic that shines in them, so undeniably bright. 

“Xander--” 

“ _Run_.” 

The eldest prince shoves him behind him, catching Garon’s axe once again with Siegfried. Leo’s blood turns to ice at the harrowing clang of metal versus metal, and he stumbles, trips backwards over Camilla’s corpse and careens to the floor. His head spins for a second, the word shaking from the force of his collision with the ground, the clang of blade against blade, and when his vision clears, he sees crimson eyes and winter-white hair, Corrin’s glassy eyes staring directly into his. 

“We have to go,” she whispers, conviction barely there in the breathy timbre of her voice. Leo barely catches it, but he pushes himself up anyway, stumbles to his feet with the sickeningly warm feeling of blood seeping into his leggings, into the fabric of his tunic and painted across the surface of his bared palms. His fingertips leave scarlet reminders of sultry laughs and smothering hugs across the cover of Brynhildr, and earthen eyes do their best not to look. 

“We can’t,” Leo grounds out, grits his teeth and pushes himself to his feet. “Big Brother is still fighting; we must lend him our strength--” 

“ _We have to go!_ ” Corrin exclaims, springing to her feet and locking tear-glossed eyes onto his. There is blood on her knees, staining the pristine white fabric of her leggings and dripping down her calves, but she stands firmly, as if what was left of Camilla were not painted across her clothes, slowly seeping into the cloth and turning her skin red. “Don’t you see? He’s fighting for _us_. We have to escape, Leo, and have hope that he will follow.” He turns his eyes back to hers fearfully, tightens his fingers painfully tight around his tome. “His aren’t the eyes of a man that will die today,” she tells him quietly. “If we run, Xander will follow. _Please_ , Leo, believe me.” 

Leo turns to look at Elise, at the slim fingers that paw at rosete eyes and tear-stained eyelashes, but fail to hide the shimmering tear stains that brand lines down his youngest sister’s face. The Hoshidan prince beside her watches them wordlessly, but Leo can read hundred thoughts in the piercing umber of his irises, and he doesn’t need to remove the gag that binds him to know what ire bubbles on his tongue. 

With a shaky, slow breath, he glances once at Corrin. She has her hands at her waist, slender fingers wrapped around the hilt of Yato, and with the ghost of a nod, he takes a decisive step forward, reaches for Elise with bloodstained hands. The little girl flinches at his touch, trembles as he tugs her fingers away from her face, but he doesn’t let that stop him. 

“Take your horse, take Corrin and run,” he commands her softly, urgently. “Go to the house we once played hide and seek in. And don’t, “ he urges her, squeezing her palms carefully in his, “Don’t look back.” 

Elise regards him fearfully. 

“Leo, wh-what’s happening?” she hiccups, curls her fingers into his own. Tears brim over her roseate eyes, catching on her eyelashes like dew on morning grass. He feels his chest ache at the sight. “What’s wr-wrong with Father?” 

Leo grimaces, stares at the scarlet that he is smearing on her porcelain skin. He turns her away. 

“Go,” he tells her again. “Go!” 

And Elise runs, swipes up the staff she had dropped on the floor, unknowingly smearing scarlet across its pearlescent surface, her fading footsteps a dull accompaniment the the sounds of metal against metal behind them. Beside him, Corrin has pulled Yato from its sheath, slicing the Hoshidan prince’s bonds free and helping him to shaky feet. His gag is the last to go, and when umber eyes lock onto his own, the word that spill from the man’s mouth are the last he expects. 

“Is this what Nohr calls a victory?” 

Leo falters. Steel clashes behind him. 

“No,” he mutters hollowly, ruefully. “This is what Nohr calls family.” The Hoshidan prince never gets to respond to the thought before a warm body careens in between them; Xander falls to the floor as Siegfried skits to the side, the scrape of steel against stone. Leo wheels around to violet, malicious fog pouring off the figure of his father and turning the air around them to ice. Beside him, Corrin raises Yato, and the words of Brynhildr start to form on his lips, but a blur of red and umber stops him short, barrels into Garon with reckless abandon. 

The axe clangs to the ground with a resounding toll - the death bells that will never ring for their fallen sister - and Garon howls. 

“I should have killed you first, Hoshidan filth!” he roars, wrapping stout fingers around the prince’s neck and stumbling furiously to his feet. “Watch, children,” Garon chuckles, crazed eyes flickering toward them, “as I show you _just_ how we execute Hoshidans in Nohr.” 

Sun-stained fingers, skin the color of Hoshidan sun, grasp blindly at their owner’s neck, prying at the cruel fingers that wring at the golden flesh, and the man gasps brokenly for air. Leo draws scarlet fingers over his tome again, drawing age-old magic from the weathered pages, but when umber eyes catch his own, he trips over his words. The desperate fingers still, and the eldest prince of Hoshido, the last living male to the eastern kingdom’s lineage, stares Leo levelly in the eye. 

“L-let it be known,” he rasps. “This is what _Hoshido_ calls family.” 

A spluttered cough shoves its way past his lips, large fingers tightening visibly around his neck, and sun-stained fingers grasp reflexively at the hands once more, begging fruitlessly for release. Leo watches with a horrified gaze as the light leaves the prince’s eyes, and by the time his body falls dully to the floor, Xander has his and Corrin’s wrists in his hands, Siegfried’s amethyst glow the only light that registers past a searing haze of dampness that blurs his vision as they run down the halls. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (the plot thickens.... ._.)
> 
> also casually self promoting my creative Twitter [@postfxrevlution](http://www.twitter.com/postfxrevlution) for me yelling about anything fic/cosplay/art related, ahaha...


	4. i fall like the sound of my name from your bloodied lips

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It ends almost identically to how it begins, with crimson eyes brighter than the stars themselves and love upon love brimming forth from their hearts, but this time his name falls from her lips like a prayer, whispering tired pleas for a better life for them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter, oh man... Let me just preface this by saying, uh. I hope you're all ready...?
> 
> And for the last time this fic, I want to thank my amazing beta, [fledermauss](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fledermauss/pseuds/fledermauss)! She has some amazing stuff for both Awakening and Fates, so go check her out~ For now, though, enjoy the last chapter of this love of mine!

Leo can’t sleep. It’s not a new feeling by far, but it is unwelcome nonetheless. 

He sits on the edge of his too-stiff bed, elbows on his knees and hands folded before him as he stares at the countless branching paths that falling raindrops paint on the inn window. He isn’t aware of where exactly he and his siblings have taken refuge, only that the shadow of their father lies miles behind. Xander had mentioned something about the Nohr-Hoshido border an hour’s ride on horseback before they stopped, and the younger prince imagines they are deep in enemy territory, almost as terrifying a thought as returning to Nohr. It’s unfamiliar, unsettling, knowing that there is hardly a safe place left to call home, but Leo swallows down that small bitterness with gritted teeth. 

The rain is loud against the roof, and Leo lets the monotonous sounds ensconce him. It’s a terribly constructed inn, hardly one befitting of royalty, but it’s hard to feel like royalty when his armor lies by the dying fireplace to dry and his only clothes are the still damp fabrics on his back, Brynhildr lies on the nightstand, just an arm’s length away, and he considers the reasons for and implications of such a placement. Whenever a crash of thunder sounds, chasing the tail ends of a blinding flash of alabaster, his hands twitch to have the tome between them, heartbeat sent sprinting at the harrowing thought that each boom could easily be Garon, knocking down the inn’s door to find them. He imagines Xander, imagines Elise and Corrin, sprawled out on the floor just like Camilla, scarlet pooling beneath them, a puddle rich and glossy enough to see his reflection in, and a shiver trickles down his spine. Earthen eyes turn away from the tome and back to the window.

Elise and Corrin’s bed sits between his and Xander’s and the window. His eldest brother sleeps soundly behind him, a scowl marring even his sleeping features last Leo had checked, and Elise curls tightly into herself on her bed, the entire blanket swaddled desperately around her. Corrin lies right by her, most of her garments shed to be cleaned of their fallen sister’s blood, but she doesn’t fight for possession of the blanket, instead wrapping slender arms around herself, shifting restlessly in her sleep. Earthen eyes watch her for a moment, staring at the glint of what little remaining firelight dances across her winter-white hair, granting the strands a flickering life all their own. The shadows on her face make her look as aged as she is ageless - a tired, war-worn princess - but one so dramatic in contrasting colors that she might as well be a painting, committed to the canvas of his mind so that he might remember beauty, no matter how exhausted and weary it may be. 

Corrin shifts again, pulls her arms tighter around herself and groans fitfully. There is another flash of brightness - lightning as pure a white as that of her hair - yet with the accompanying boom of thunder, the inn’s doors do not break down. Instead, crimson eyes fly open, and his breath catches. She gasps softly as she awakens, butterfly lashes fluttering quickly as awareness floods into their crimson irises. The first thing their gaze latches onto is wide earthen eyes, staring at her unblinkingly through the dying fireplace light.

“Leo,” she begins quietly, voice still rough at the edges from sleep. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” he answers before she can ask, tearing sharp eyes away from hers with a sigh. He stares at Brynhildr again, at the intricate cover of the tome that sits ready, waiting for the next time slender fingers will twitch at a crash of thunder, when the shell of a man he once called Father will find itself at their doorstep, axe and hands stained with Camilla’s blood and Hoshidan rain and prepared to litter the foreign soil with his remaining children’s bodies. He hears the mattress shift as she sits up, blinking away any remaining fatigue, and when the slow barrage of thunder and lightning seem to have reached a lull, Leo dares a look back at Corrin.

Bleariness is long gone from her crimson irises, but exhaustion paints itself across her face in the mercilessly dark circles beneath her eyes and the heavy downward tilt of her lips. If there was a time when her smile would be something with a brightness to rival the sun itself, Leo only holds the ghost of its memory now; the thought of it is a wispy afterimage in his mind against the startling reality of her sallow features in the weak firelight. She’s undeniably shaken, broken and lost as the rest of them, but he knows, irrevocably, that he can never look at her and not think she is resplendent; even in the midst of a relentless thunderstorm, enemies to all sides of them and not a truly safe haven to be found, there is an indescribable bliss that floods his veins when her crimson eyes meet his, and she gazes at him like he is all she cares to look at in the deteriorating world around them. 

She swings her legs off the side of the bed, stands up with careful feet against the cool wood floor of their room. Leo’s gaze follows her as she walks toward him, swoops down to her knees before him, and as she leans against his legs, the tired look she offers him is paired with a faint attempt at a half smile. It is too heavy to truly be called a smile, the corners of her lips struggling to hold themselves aloft, eyes shining with a half-hidden fear that might never flicker out. Leo knows the terrified glint that still stays in her eyes, has seen it in Xander’s and Elise’s, has doubtlessly had it reflected in his own; it is the very same fear that had gripped them when they were met with lavender hair slowly seeping with scarlet, and the harrowing memory flickers through his mind’s eye, causing his fingernails to curl painfully into his palms. 

Corrin’s hands find his almost immediately, slender fingers flitting across the backs of his knuckles and down the length of his fingers, urging them to release their death grip around themselves. Her hands are cold, a startlingly accurate mirror of the icy air that had nipped at his skin when they stumbled their way into the inn, but the tenderness with which she holds him is anything but. She pulls his fingers from their curled fists, splaying them out with painstaking care against the surface of his knee, and when all tension is gone in them, the girl brings each fingertip up to her lips, pressing lingering kisses against the pads of each. Leo watches her curiously, follows the languid movement of her hands, the slow blink of her eyelids, and relishes in the searing warmth of her lips, every opposite to the calloused fingers that twist around his own. 

When she reaches his last finger, she pauses with her lips pressed against the pad of his thumb, exhales a warm sigh and leans tiredly against his hand. Her crimson eyes fall shut and they do not open, even as he shifts his hands to cup her face, pressing the fingers that she had just kissed gently against her cheek. 

“What are we going to do?” she exhales. “Camilla is gone and we’re so,  _ so _ lost. What’s going to happen to Nohr? Our friends?  _ Us? _ ” She stops there, cuts herself short, but he senses the way her jaw tenses beneath his touch, feels her teeth chatter and catches the beginnings of a soft sob as it builds up behind her lips, right before it bubbles forth. Corrin cries softly, brings her fingers up to his and latches onto them tightly, and Leo has never felt like more of a lifeline, so needed, so important, than he does now, with the heat of her cheek pressed against his palm and her tears splashing down the willowy curve of his fingers. 

He leans down, rests his forehead carefully against hers, and when Corrin blinks open her eyes, there are tears clinging to her eyelashes, glazing over the brilliant crimson of her irises; she is fragility in a way he hasn’t seen since they were children, climbing too high on too-tall trees and falling like a graceless star, tears clinging to her cheeks as she nursed broken bones and broken pride alike. It’s a solemn reminder that the warrior princess is just as breakable as they all are, with a heart that beats just like his own in her irrevocably human chest, and Leo lets that realization seep into his tongue, lets his muttered reassurances be salve against her bleeding, beating wounds as he thumbs away her tears, slides down from his perch on the bed to sit before her and pull her tightly into his arms. 

“We will prevail, Corrin,” he tells her resolutely. “As long as any of us still stand, then there exists a will to right what has been wronged in this world.”

Crimson eyes stare up at him, tears alit like opals in the fading, dancing firelight, and for one immeasurable moment, Leo entertains the thought of victory when the sun rises, with every wrong righted and the promise of a better future, beginning at dawn.

“I’m scared, Leo,” she mutters almost inaudibly, tear-stained eyes locking onto his one last time before they fall shut, and she sinks into his chest. Lightning flashes through the window again, dizzying him with a sudden burst of white. Thunder booms immediately after, not quite loud enough to stifle the soft whimper that tumbles from Corrin’s lips, and the storm outside rolls back in with lightning, thunder, and a merciless vengeance. Earthen eyes slide shut and he snakes his arms around her waist, pulling her prone form closer and burying his face in her hair.

* * *

Sharp caramel eyes flash dangerously.

“I don’t give a  _ damn  _ what peace treaty Izumo is under,” the scarlet-haired woman begins lowly. Her sun-stained fingers - just as gold as Corrin’s might have been, had she grown up in the brilliance of Hoshido - are white at the knuckles, fingers gripping her naginata so tightly that the quake of her arms is visible. “What Nohr has done is unforgivable, and as the last remaining heir to Hoshido’s throne, it’ll be paid back by  _ my _ hands!”

Leo watches the exchange numbly, earthen eyes flickering aimlessly between the Hoshidan princess and his brother. Xander sits atop his horse apprehensively, fingers beginning to curl around the hilt of Siegfried, sheathed so dutifully at his side; the princess is a clean mirror of him, fiery eyes and harsh features, her weapon displayed for all to see, blade pointed at Nohr’s eldest prince as she sits atop her pegasus. Part of him wants to yell at Xander to draw his weapon, but as his fingers tense around the reins of his own horse, Corrin’s arms tighten around his waist. 

The woman before them is her sister, he belatedly realizes. Corrin clings to him tightly, arms trembling slightly against his chest, and he finds himself ultimately speechless, watching the exchange between the two royals without a single word on his silver tongue.

“We just want to go somewhere safe!” a young voice calls out from behind. “Nohr isn’t… It isn’t safe right now, so please!  _ Please _ let us in!” Leo doesn’t need to turn to know it is Elise that has spoken, confused roseate eyes staring at the scene before her without fully grasping the implications. The hardened glare of the princess is not one that offers the mercy his youngest sister asks for, and the blond can find neither heart nor words to tell her so. Caramel eyes glance over to Elise, and for the briefest moment, her stony facade twitches.

“You’re just a child,” Hinoka breathes incredulously. “Almost Sakura’s age…” Leo barely hears her. “I hate to do this in front of someone so young, but some things are unavoidable.” Her eyes turn back to Xander; his sword is still sheathed, even now. “This is for Ryoma, and Takumi, and Sakura.” Caramel eyes flash in his direction, and Leo is almost completely sure she is looking at Corrin. “I can’t let you four pass.”

Her pegasus leaps into the air, and Leo’s reaction is immediate. He grasps for his tome, ever present at his side, and flings a spell into the space she had just occupied. When the dust clears, she’s gone, and he throws his gaze hurriedly upward. 

“Brother, you have to draw your weapon!” he finally shouts, tears his eyes away from the sky to meet those of his brother’s. Xander meets his gaze immediately, fingers tightening around the hilt of Siegfried, and as his horse bodily leaps back to avoid a decisive attack from Hinoka, he scowls and pulls the legendary sword from its sheath. Siegfried glints dangerously, its amethyst light dwarfed by the sheer brilliance of the Hoshido sun, but the blade looks no less menacing for it. The scarlet-haired woman pauses, eying the weapon fearfully, but she grips her naginata even tighter, features setting with a renewed determination. Leo begins to flips through the pages of Brynhildr, but slender fingers stop him, a porcelain just beginning to take in the Hoshido sun that it has lived a lifetime without. 

Corrin wraps her fingers insistently around his own, and he angles his head to look at her curiously, only to be stopped by a muttered, “Wait,  _ please _ ,” against the skin of his neck. 

The sky knight dives again, swinging her weapon at Xander with a terrifying ferocity, and between the clashing sound of metal against metal, it quickly becomes apparent that the Hoshidan princess is aiming only for their oldest brother. 

“Corrin, we must help--”

“That’s my  _ sister _ ,” she breathes shakily. He feels her arms loosen around his waist, slipping away like water from between his fingers, and try as he might to grasp at her receding hands, she still manages to leap off his horse before he can stop her, Yato swinging wildly in its sheath at her side, but not a slender finger wrapped around its hilt. He calls her name, and Leo doesn’t need to watch the way she simply sprints forward and plants herself firmly between the woman and Xander to know that his words fall upon unhearing ears. 

“Hinoka, stop!” Corrin shouts. Surprisingly, she does. Hinoka falters in midair, stops the swing of her lance to hover, if just for a brief moment, before the unarmed form of her would-be sister. Leo does not realize he is holding his breath until the Hoshidan princess lowers the tip of her naginata, meeting crimson eyes begrudgingly, and he feels a bubbling exhalation burst past his lips.

“Kamui,” Hinoka begins hesitantly. The name sounds strange to Leo’s ears, one he remembers Corrin repeating only once, so long ago, with Hoshido not far behind them and shouts of betrayal still echoing in their ears. “You know I can’t do that. Takumi, Sakura, and Ryoma… They died because we let Nohrians onto our soil. I won’t let that mistake be made again. None of you are passing this gate as long as I have anything to say about it!”

She raises her naginata again, and Leo’s hands grasp instinctively for his reins. He would have charged between the two had Corrin not opened her mouth once again; the words that fall past her lips are quiet, but they are ice in his veins, making his heart stop and his blood run cold.

“ _ Take me instead _ ,” Corrin whispers. “Let Xander, Leo, and Elise pass in exchange for my life. It’s  _ my _ fault this war began, anyway! Kill me for what happened to our… to  _ your  _ siblings, Hinoka, just let mine take refuge in Izuno. We...They have nowhere else to go, even in Nohr. This is all I ask,” she pleads softly. Her hands move to her waist, staring up into caramel eyes as she unbuckles the belt that holds up her sword and lets the legendary blade clatter dejectedly onto the dusty earth. The clang of metal against earth shocks Leo back to his senses, and his hands fly to his reins, forcing his horse up beside Corrin.

“Corrin, don’t--”

“I’m sorry, Leo,” she murmurs lowly, heavy crimson eyes flickering once in his direction. before they are gone, turned toward Hinoka with a hard set determination. “Please, Sister. I don’t deserve this kindness, but I’m begging it anyway. I can’t join Ryoma, Sakura, and Takumi where they are, but I will join them in death.”

“That’s  _ enough _ , Corrin!” 

Xander’s shout startles the entire party, and all eyes are on him as he sheathes his sword, dismounting his horse and leading it wordlessly toward Corrin. He picks Yato up with careful hands and offers the white-haired girl both the reins and her blade. Wide crimson eyes stare at him uncomprehendingly, but Corrin accepts Xander’s offering hesitantly, only taking them when calloused fingers press them insistently into her hands. Leo’s own mount nickers restlessly beneath him, as if sensing the death grip that willowy fingers have around its reins. 

“Big Brother!” Elise shouts, bringing her horse up right beside him. “What are you… What are you doing?”

“Princess Hinoka is right,” Xander says, turning briefly to glance at Elise, at Leo and Corrin. “The atrocities that Nohr has committed are truly unforgivable.”

“Brother,” Leo adds lowly, “You can’t possibly mean to go through with this.”

“I do, Leo,” he interjects. “As high prince of Nohr, it is my duty to right the wrongs our country has committed.” He pauses, turns his gaze up to Hinoka. “All I ask for my life, Princess Hinoka, is that you do everything in your power to help my siblings end this war. To bring down the man we once called Father, King Garon.”

“And what if I refuse?” Hinoka asks sharply.

Xander remains steadfast. “Then I will be forced to settle this dispute with blades rather than words.”

Caramel eyes widen, just for a moment, before they harden once again. She grits her teeth, words bubbling almost palpably beneath her tongue, and after a moment, she speaks.

“I accept,” Hinoka replies lowly. She lowers her naginata, eases her pegasus carefully to the ground. “There is no one that wants this war over more than Hoshido, and I will  _ never _ stop fighting for my family and my country. I’ll let your siblings pass, Prince Xander, but only this once.” 

“Big Brother,” Elise begins softly, tears starting to form in her roseate eyes. “You’re not really going to...leave us, are you? You’ll follow us, r-right?” 

Xander looks at her sadly, offering her a small smile. Leo watches as his fingers loosen the belt that holds up his sheath, pulling Siegfried free and pressing the sheath into Elise’s small hands. She is easily dwarfed by the sword, fingers barely able to wrap around the blade, but her fingers curl around it anyway, so tightly that her porcelain knuckles turn as white as snow.

“This is my promise to you, Little Sister,” he tells her softly. “I will never be too far behind.”

“Xander,” Corrin speaks up. “You don’t have to do this. Let  _ me _ stay, I’m begging you--!”

“Your sister,” Xander interrupts. “Princess Hinoka. She reminds me of you and Camilla in equal parts. Steadfast and so tirelessly dedicated to her family.”

A soft gasp falls past Corrin’s lips, but no words are able to follow it before Hinoka’s pegasus whinnies restlessly, cutting her off. 

“You guys better pass before I change my mind,” the sky knight tells them levelly, narrowing her eyes at the four. 

“You three need to go,” Xander tells them. Chestnut eyes glance at all of them, but they linger on Leo the longest. “Take care of them, Brother.”

Leo stares back at Xander, at the steadfast figure of his eldest brother, the man he had grown up admiring and envying for so long. It’s numbing, thinking that when they pass the gates into Izumo, Xander will not be leading them any longer, and a lifetime of confessions and apologies struggle against his tightly pressed lips. Beside him, Corrin mounts Xander’s horse, and she and Elise start quietly forward, their eyes staring back at the two owlishly. In the end, Leo says nothing. The youngest brother nods silently at his older, and with a wordless flick of his reins, he starts forward. They trot past the gate without interruption, but Leo takes a moment to lag briefly behind, pausing right beside the Hoshidan princess.

“Your elder brother died for the same peace Xander does,” he mutters. “And just as you look at him and see your fallen siblings, I hope you know he looks at you and sees the ghost of our sister, too.”

Hinoka shifts, turning her head to look his way. 

“Prince Leo,” she begins slowly. 

“I can’t forgive you, Princess Hinoka,” he sighs, “but I will let this pass, if only to honor Xander’s memory.”

She doesn’t respond, and Leo doesn’t look her way as he flicks his reins one last time and trots through Izumo’s gates without another word.

* * *

Leo is thrown back into consciousness short of breath, lungs screaming for air and mind spinning. His first breath in is a sudden one, and he coughs on dust and his own saliva, coughing violently as he pushes himself up from the ground. His vision is blurred at the edges, mind still foggy and disoriented, but he vaguely remembers Corrin’s name on his lips and his name on hers; the furious image of her figure sprinting at forward, Yato in her hands, was the last thing he saw before his vision faded to black.

He groans blearily, brushes his hair out of his face with a grimace. His fingers find blood smeared across the side of his face, still slightly sticky to the touch, leading up to a sizable cut running a few inches from his temple and across his crown. The soft wince of pain that falls past his lips is unavoidable, and he swipes away the blood on his tunic as he stumbles up, surveying the battlefield around him.

Bodies litter Castle Izumo’s main hall, the memory of a peace pact shattered long ago by King Garon’s arrival on the scene. Leo grasps for memories of the battle as he stumbles through the castle, earthen eyes searching for familiar faces. His horse is nowhere to be found, either spooked by the blow that had knocked his rider off, or lost among the carrion. He hopes silently for the first option, and Leo doesn’t notice Brynhildr sprawled on the floor until he trips over it, falling onto his palms and knees with a sharp hiss. The cover is beaten and stained in scarlet, some of the pages singed or torn, but he picks it up nonetheless, runs light fingers across its worn cover.

Behind his closed eyes, he sees flashes of brilliant white and cyan, the colors of Brynhildr as it bursts forth from his fingers, and he remembers the steely flash of an axe, violet smoke effusing off the figure of Garon menacingly before him. The cut along his head still aches dully, and he wonders if the same axe that had cut down two others right before him was the one that left him with that scar. The thought sends a shiver down his spine. He remembers being face to face with the shell of his father, spite on the other’s lips as there was magic on his, spells tumbling forth without a second thought as he fended off blow after blow of his mighty axe. It was undoubtedly Garon that had knocked him from his horse, and there is little afterwards that he remembers.

One of the things he remembers is Corrin, the sound of his name falling panickedly from her lips as he fell, and she was the last blur of white and ebony he saw before unconsciousness enveloped him. She must have charged at Garon, he realizes with a start, blood turning to ice in his veins. Leo bolts up, ignoring the flood of spots and blackness to his vision, running gracelessly across the hall in search of a familiar head of winter-white hair. He almost rolls his ankle tripping over an unmoving arm, but when earthen eyes catch sight of her hair - glinting gold in the late afternoon sunlight that filters in through the castle windows, even in the midst of a battlefield - he sprints forward with reckless abandon.

Leo falls to his knees at Corrin’s side, chest heaving, and the first thing he sees is scarlet. It paints itself across her torn armor, painting the white a brilliant sanguine. He forces back the urge to throw up.

“C-Corrin,” Leo chokes out weakly. He brushes her hair out of her face, so deceivingly pristine, and lifts her head up gently. At the sound of her name, she stirs gently, and for a moment, his heart stops. Crimson eyes open slowly, and when they focus on Leo, she gasps.

“ _ Leo _ ,” she breathes, and never has his name sounded more like a thankful prayer, like gratitude and relief tumbling forth from delicate lips. “You’re alive… We  _ won _ .”

He stares at her. 

“Truly, Corrin? Garon is...gone?”

She smiles tiredly, and the sight is shocking; there is blood painted across her teeth, staining the once white surfaces a harrowing scarlet. Earthen eyes widen, but she pays no notice.

“Truly,” she repeats softly. “We won, Leo, and you’re  _ alive _ .”

“Of course I am,” he tells her, just as breathily, leaning down to rest his forehead against hers. He lets his eyes fall shut, pressing a chaste kiss against her lips as he mutters, “I promised you I wouldn’t fall.”

“Then that makes one promise kept,” she laughs weakly. His eyes fly open, and Leo leans back suddenly. Corrin only keeps that same, tired smile on her lips, looking up at him with glistening crimson eyes. 

“N-no,” he gasps, a sharp warmth beginning to prickle behind his eyes, “you can’t mean--”

“I’m so sorry,” Corrin exhales. His blood runs cold just as he feels fire drip down his cheeks, branding painful tear tracks down the sides of his face.

Slender fingers reach up to cup his cheeks, and he feels the sticky scarlet smeared against them before anything else. Just like his blood, so icy in his veins, her hands are cold, even now. Leo stares at her with tear-stained earthen eyes, and he hates how morbidly fitting that fact is. It's like corpse fingers cupping the side of his face, painting the pale skin red where they try to swipe away his rebellious tears, but where there is no heat in her touch, there is a warmth in her smile; Corrin smiles weakly up at him – the grace of an angel in a dying vessel of a corpse – and Leo twines his fingers so tightly with hers that he feels himself begin to shake. She blinks slowly, butterfly lashes opening to reveal blurry crimson eyes, as striking red as the blood that emblazons the front of her chest, but infinitely more beautiful. 

"I... I want my last words to be your name," she tells him softly. "Leo _. _ "

He blinks hard, feels another searing tear cut its way down his cheek, only to be wiped away by her bloodied fingers. 

"No," he breathes back, tugging her closer into his chest, curling his shoulders around her prone form.  He can’t wash the feeling of her blood off his hands, just like he can’t erase the sensation of her lips ghosting over his, fingers fluttering across his skin. She's imprinted on him like a brand on wax, and he’s never felt more pliable - so easily torn and tugged this way and that - than when she whispers his name like it is a prayer, and his breath  _ stops _ . "Those are terrible last words,” Leo mutters. “I won't let them be your last.  _ I won’t _ ."

A shaky laugh bubbles past her lips – a sad, soft, heart-wrenching sound in itself – and Leo feels his chest  _ ache  _ for this girl. 

"I think it fits," she counters quietly. "What better way to end my life than letting the name of the one who owns it fall from my bloody lips?" Corrin asks, and the words are beautifully rueful from her scarlet stained lips, accentuated by her bloodily brilliant smile and her quietly forced laugh. 

“You have it all wrong,” he tells her insistently. “It was  _ my _ life that was always yours. Why did you give yours for this cause when it could have been me? When  _ you  _ could have lived?”

A frown flickers across her features, only there for a split second before she smooths it away. The hand that cups his face wipes away his tears, fingers so impossibly cool against the searing fire of his flesh. 

“I...I can see it, Leo,” she mutters eventually, so raspy and soft. 

Leo blinks hard, forcing the tears away, if only for a moment, to see her clearly. There is a light in her crimson eyes that he had long forgotten, and all he can do is stare. Her hand against his cheek starts to fall slowly, heavily from his face, and he cups the back of it gently, fits his fingers between the valleys of her knuckles and holds her cold palm insistently to his face. She weakly curls her fingers into his cheek in response - the graze of sticky, dull fingernails against his skin. Corrin stares up at him with half lidded eyes, looking more tired than dying, and the scarlet smile that stretches across her features is as brilliant as it is terrifying. 

“See  _ what _ ?” Leo asks desperately, curls his fingers even tighter around her palms. She exhales the ghost of a laugh, so soft that Leo’s ears barely catch the lilting sound. 

“A new dawn,” she answers serenely. “For you. Me.  _ Nohr _ . This must be what victory feels like,” she contemplates, laughing softly once more. Her breathing, previously labored and ragged, the desperate gasps of someone holding onto life, have evened out into an impossibly soft series of shallow inhalations and exhalations, so painfully synonymous to sleep that Leo almost wants to close his eyes, if only to have her dying breaths be something other than the last air she will ever taste. He doesn’t, though, forces himself to keep his eyes open, urges her, frantically, to do the same.

“Stay with me, Corrin,” he pleads, bringing her other hand up to his mouth, placing frenzied kisses against her knuckles. Her hands are startlingly cold against his lips, but he kisses them anyway, tries messily to breathe some semblance of warmth back into them. “There is no victory to be claimed if I were to lose you in its realization. A world without you has no meaning! Stay with me,  _ please _ .”

It’s the last time she looks at him - half lidded eyes shining with a brilliance that inarguably outdoes the sun itself, a close-lipped smile that hides the bloody scarlet which stains her mouth and dulls her words. His heart stops at the sight. 

“You’re  _ beautiful _ ,” he blurts, unable to stop himself, unable to stop the burning behind his eyes as it erupts into a fresh blossom of warmth, tracing fiery tear tracks down his cheeks once again.  Some ebb down to her hand against his cheek, willing away the sticky layer of blood with a maudlin wetness of their own, and some follow their path down his porcelain cheeks, falling from his face and splashing against hers, tears to mar her serene expression, but never her ineffable beauty. Her smile grows at his words, the most radiant grin he remembers seeing - will ever remember seeing - and with her startlingly crimson eyes so calmly shut, she dies with these words on her lips.

“You’ll make a great king,” she tells him sincerely. “ _ Leo. _ ”

Her arm falls slack from his cheek, the sudden weight of it catching him by surprise, and Corrin falls one last time from his grip, this time to somewhere he can’t possibly follow. Her cool hand slips from his fingers like water, so fluid and uncatchable, and as he loses hold of her, he loses any remaining semblance of control; a broken sob tumbles past his lips, tearing at his throat and causing his shoulders to quake in effort. Alone but victorious on the battlefield, Leo buries his face into the winter-white of her hair and weeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> closes my eyes and sprawls out on the floor
> 
> I just. I want to thank you all for sticking with me and this fic until the bitter, _bitter_ end. I honestly love my readers so much. You guys are amazing, and the comments, support, and feedback you give never cease to make me feel so blessed and happy every day.
> 
> If you guys can, I'd like to get some feedback from my readers for future reference when I'm writing, as well! It's [here](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ud29DTahAG09O3fkVSauG77a3GXGhr3zzf3Tojj0z4w/viewform) on Google Forms, and you don't have to answer all the questions if you don't want to. I'd really appreciate it! ^u^ And thank you again for sticking with me for this whirlwind of a fic~ Look out for my next project sometime this summer!


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